Government Oppression

While Trump and Pence cooked up their little jingo party at the football game at taxpayers' expense (>$240K), Trump was also brooding about his poor self and the lack of respect he gets from...just about everybody. So he tweets that no NFL tax credits or relief should be given to any team that disrespects the "flag, the nation, the military, and our first responders". Besides showing a willful ignorance about what the protests signify, this would also represent the clear and present danger of deliberately violating the Constitution. The first Amendment does not guarantee that you can call your boss a moron (even if he is one), it does not guarantee that you can defame your neighbor. But it does guarantee that the government cannot suppress your freedom of expression, particularly for speech it does not like. Since the mid-19th century, the notion of government has been extended to include not just the federal government but state and local governments as well. Any suppression has to have a public interest goal that is agreed upon in advance.

There is no more classic American example of government suppression than taxes. So if Trump is threatening to abrogate tax relief concessions, he is also threatening with the same language to increase the taxes of teams whose players are using their own First Amendment rights. That's pretty much a textbook example of government suppression of language or actions with which the government disagrees. There is no public interest such as safety at risk; there is only Trump's ego which though large is clearly fragile. Poor moron, sad moron.